Can Akamai Provide A Real View Into Cloud App Behavior?

By Adrian Bridgwater, October 14, 2013

A bolstering boost for an ecosystem of expectant developers

The Akamai Open Platform Initiative arrives this month during the company's sixth annual Edge customer conference. This set of programs and components is intended to create more opportunities for developer and user community collaboration (and innovation) with Akamai technology.

The firm describes itself as a provider of cloud services for online content and business applications. If that's too generic for you — what Akamai does is provide technology like the Akamai Cloud Monitor. This software provides a real-time data feed that delivers critical transactions and security data to users' reporting environments for insight into trends and patterns.

The immodestly named Akamai Intelligent Platform has functionality for what is marked out as "system and development operations integration" jobs. Akamai {OPEN} provides access to a set of REST-style APIs for visibility into and greater control over their interaction with the Akamai Intelligent Platform, from any environment. {OPEN} uses the Apiary API to expose this platform's APIs to developers.

NOTE: Similar access to SDKs and other programmatic assets is expected.

The focal point for Akamai {OPEN} is a public web property for developers and technical personnel, which will provide access to education, downloads, documentation, and resources related to Akamai {OPEN}. https://developer.akamai.com will serve as the launch point for this web property and the gateway for the Akamai technical community.

"Developer experience is the single most important success factor when it comes to APIs," said Jakub Nešetřil, founder and CEO, Apiary. "We built the company to make designing great APIs easy. Partnering with Akamai on Akamai {OPEN} will significantly extend our reach with this community, and more broadly facilitate a larger ecosystem for innovation."

Through the recently introduced Property Manager capability, Akamai's Luna Control Center provides access to, and control, of how customers use Akamai products including self-service, troubleshooting, and single sign-on workflow management tools. Akamai insists that fostering a sense of community and helping bolster an ecosystem of like-minded companies focused on driving business innovation through Internet technologies are foundational elements of the Open Platform Initiative.

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